The team at pet365 have an ambitious plan to dispense dog facts all summer long using infographics. They’ve already covered Dog World Records and Dog Training, and their brand new graphic compares Dog Anatomy to human anatomy. I’m a big fan of using multimedia to convey information to maximize understanding and retention as many people are visual and auditory learners and technical information can be hard to express clearly in simple language.
Here’s their current graphic:
Dog Anatomy graphic created by Pet365. Click here to view the full post.
The factoid that stood out to me was “dogs have sweat glands only on their pads and nose.” This is why brachycephalic breeds are so prone to overheating: the nose acts like a radiator and if you don’t have enough nose, you can’t effectively transfer body heat into the air.
I also think it’s pretty cool that humans also have taste-buds on their lips, cheeks, and the roof of the mouth. Who knew?
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Dogs can see better at lower light than humans, though.
retrieverman recently posted..Afghan mastiff, 1879
I am not sure what the fascination is with gastric emptying time in dogs. It’s variable according to the squishiness (water content) of the food. This is true for both dogs and humans. Digestion time is also dependent on a host of other factors as well.
Sighthounds, and I am going to presume other breeds that were developed in hot climates as well (or to run fast), have low thyroid hormone compared to ‘normal’ dogs. Since I don’t actually own any other kind of dog besides sighthounds (well, one, but he’s little) I don’t have a basis for comparison, but I can bet if you take a ‘normal’ dog built for a moderate climate, squish it’s face in, make it’s body compact and prone to fat, then add heat, you’d get a maladapted mess.
Jess recently posted..Zora Will Have the Steak. Or Perhaps the Baby Food.
Didn’t someone observe that just as most internet forum arguments devolve into talking about Hitler that most dog conversations devolve into talking about poop? I overheard one conversation at the dog park that must have stayed on the subject for 25 minutes with vivid detail.
Well, you have to frequent the Church of the Raw Diet to learn that kibbles stay in the digestive tract FOREVER! and this is BAD! Never mind that there are no studies showing this, and many studies showing that food transit time in the dog is highly variable.
For some people, the fascination with what goes in the dog extends to following it to the end of it’s journey. If you have a dog with a pathology, like IBD, this is understandable. If your dog is normal and does well on it’s food, an obsession with feces other than checking for major malfunctions is just another indicator of “I’m a better pet owner than you-itis.” A major symptom of this disease is the assertion that your diet is the One True Diet ™ and that every dog will be healthier and better off if their owners were as good and caring as you, proven by your conversion to the Church of One True Diet.
Jess recently posted..Zora Will Have the Steak. Or Perhaps the Baby Food.
That’s like the five pounds of fecal matter that are in your colon right now!
retrieverman recently posted..Afghan mastiff, 1879
When a conversation devolves into that, it’s a good indicator how well-trained the humans are in picking up after their dogs.
Dave recently posted..Supreme Arrogance of Religious Thinking
It’s not just dogs, many people with infants are the exact same way. =P
One of the many reasons I avoid larval humans if at all possible.
Jess recently posted..Zora Will Have the Steak. Or Perhaps the Baby Food.
Larval humans, that’s awesome.
I have proof that raw food doesn’t go through a dog in like, 4 hours, as those wierdo raw people say (I try not to associate with them but it happens). Conker barfed up half digested meat more than 8 hours after he ate it one night. I could still tell what was what, so if it digests in 4 hours like a lot of them say then I shouldn’t have been able to tell chicken from beef. They are just flat-out wrong or my dog is malfunctioning, one of the two.
Losech recently posted..Sasha’s Teeth 2
This is nothing I’ve looked into with a scientific eye, and certainly not high on my list… I don’t really care how long it takes food to make its way through my dog…. but I don’t see HOW raw food would be digested faster or why that would be a good thing. I’d think it’d be the exact opposite. Digestion is in part about denaturing proteins and cooked food is already denatured. I would guess that raw food would take longer to digest (probably a good thing!) given that it’s not COOKED. I thought one of the problems in humans was that our food is already so processed that we get blood sugar spikes and crashes and that our food is digested too fast, etc. So why would this be a benefit to dogs?
There is actually an old in vitro study (I have it somewhere, I can look if anybody is interested) that shows that cooked meat is digested faster. There is a recent study in snakes (Burmese pythons IIRC) that shows that cooked meat uses less energy to digest than raw meat.
There a lot of studies in dogs regarding the digestive tract because they are used as models for human research. Gastric emptying time and ph are extremely variable, even in lab beagles fed the same food.
If you want to see how long your dog takes to digest a meal, either add grated carrots to a meal, or blue or green food coloring, then check the stool.
In my experience, with dogs that have yakked up chicken quarters at various intervals after eating, the meat is digested and passed out of the stomach first, then the fat and bones. This makes sense because the meat has the most water in it. Illness can cause a slowdown of the system and undigested food will be vomited even after a considerable time.
In terms of the pancreas, the hardest food components to digest are fat, protein, and carbs, in that order.
Jess recently posted..Zora Will Have the Steak. Or Perhaps the Baby Food.
“The factoid that stood out to me was “dogs have sweat glands only on their pads and nose.”
Except for hairless dogs, who magically have gained the ability to sweat through their skin. ‘Dogs101’ said so, so it must be true!
The difference in sleep needs explains why my dogs are all snoozing while I am up surfing the blogisphere.
Dogs don’t use their sweatglands for cooling purposes, they use panting -wich sucks for brachycephalic dogs as well-, and radiation from ao tongue and ears. Sweatglands can be found all over dogs, just very few (except for the paws and nose).